HVAC: The beginning.

Well, the first two weeks are done and what can I say? How about a little background on the course?

 I decided to get into HVAC after a couple of different conversations. I was visiting my brother in Victoria one day. He is a machinist and works at the dockyards in Esquimalt. He mentioned that from time to time, they post openings for apprentices in different trades and mentioned that Refrigeration tech's earn quite a good living. We talked about it a little but I was happy at work and had lots of other things going on in my life so I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Later that year I ended up getting laid off from my job and found myself looking at the possibility of changing careers. After about 6 months I talk to my career councillor about maybe retraining for something different. I mentioned that I had seen a course on HVAC on VIU's website and his eyes lit up. I got the feeling he thought that was a good trade.

I spent a couple of months researching the trade and filling out an application to be sponsored to go to school. The application went in through an agency that works with the provincial government to get people educated and employed. They are called Amber Educational Services but their contract with the government expires in March so they won't be around much longer. However, there will be some kind of agency that will apparently take over as the program is very popular and effective.

At the same time, I started getting my application in to VIU to see if there was still room in the course. I found out that the daytime class was full, but they offered an evening course as well. There was still space available in the evening course, but it was almost full as well. I did the required assesment test to prove that I was smart enough to go back to school. The test was based on math, reading comprehension and mechanical reasoning. I did a lot of practice on the math as it has been awhile since I had to think about converting fractions and percentages among other things, but it went very well and I passed.

Finally I got all my approvals (there is more involved with this, but I will save that for another time). The other thing about the course was that it is taught in Duncan. I looked at some possibilities for staying in Duncan during the week, but it is only about an hour drive so I decided to wait and see if there was someone I could commute with from Parksville or Nanaimo.

I got to Duncan for the first night and found out that our teacher is a woman. Normally that's not a big deal, but during my research on the trade I found out that there are very few women working in HVAC/refrigeration (less than 5% I think) so it was a bit of a surprise. However, our teacher has been working in the industry or teaching since the early 80's, so she is very experienced and knowledgeable about the trade.

The other thing I discovered is that due to an error at administration, we only had 8 people registered for the class and only 6 showed up. Out of those 6, two were from Duncan, two from Victoria and one from Cowichan lake. So much for commuting. Since then we have another guy join who lives in Nanaimo that I am working on setting up some kind of drive sharing but I haven't worked that out yet.

Anyway the classes are really starting to get interesting now. The first week was a little slow because we spent a lot of time just going over the rules and safety regulations. On a side note I was laughing to myself as we went through the safety regulations because I have worked quite a bit with my father-in-law over the years. He is an extremely experienced and knowledgeable contractor, and I learn things from him every time I work with him. However, safety has never been his strong suit. I think almost every item listed on the first two pages are rules that I have seen him or someone working with him violate on a consistent basis. Love you, Doug!

We have been working the last week on basic refrigeration which has meant we have started calculating the BTU's needed to melt and boil water as a basis for learning about refrigerants. We have also starting working on calculating voltage, current, resistance and power for basic circuits. In our tools class we practiced cutting, flaring and bending copper tubing, something we will be doing a lot as HVAC/R techs. I had done some plumbing before working at home and in the restoration business, but it is a lot more precise when you are plumbing for refrigerants as they are a lot more sensitive to imperfections in the copper.

As we start to go over new things in class I am getting a sense of the depth of this course and I know it will get very intense very soon.

That's about all for now, I will try and post more info soon so it is not such a long and dry read.

Talk to you soon,
Rob